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7 Educational Presentation Ideas and Templates for Online Classes

As the world gets increasingly digitized, the move to online classes is becoming extremely common. To ensure e-learning is carried out effectively and constructively, educators need to arm themselves with educational presentations that can encourage and inspire.

One of the biggest challenges teachers today face is maintaining students’ attention. This is particularly difficult when teaching Gen Z, a generation of digital natives—especially when teachers themselves aren’t.

To help students stay focused during online classes, lessons need to be as informative and learning-optimized as they are visually stimulating. In this article, we’ll present to you seven of the best educational presentations you can use to facilitate this all-important teacher-student communication and make distance learning fun.

e-Learning Presentation

This e-learning presentation template is perfect for preparing webinars and online classes. It offers much versatility, which makes it extremely easy to adapt.

It includes pre-prepared slides with infographics and charts and is designed to offer quality and high-level training—be it webinars, online seminars, postgraduate courses, online higher courses, etc.

The color used for the text and graphics also provide a good contrast with the background, making it more eye-catching and thus helping students focus.

Furthermore, everything in this template is 100 percent editable and it’s a wonderful choice for creating a customized education presentation.

#StayAtHome Games

At first glance, it’s pretty clear that this next educational presentation is intended for children . Encompassing a fun design aimed at entertaining kids, this template allows them to learn and play at the same time while at home.

It even takes education to the next level by incorporating gamification elements, whereby game playing is used to encourage learning and skill development.

The template is completely interactive and structured like a contest. For you, the teacher, that means you can create and personalize your own questions and answers according to the subject.

It’s also very enjoyable for the kids as it is equipped with audio files for sound effects and buttons they can click to answer the questions.

To help fuel the wild imagination of kids, cute and creative illustrations are used throughout the template. Coupled with the striking and vivid colors, this template will not only attract but also retain the student’s attention.

As an added kick, the template even offers a surprise ending: an adorable, personalized diploma for the brave superheroes who participated in the contest! By likening the kids to victorious heroes, it rewards them with a sense of achievement and keeps them motivated.

Math Workshop

This illustrative educational presentation is the ideal template for an online Math workshop . It’s designed with icons and isometric illustrations that are relevant to the subject and comes with a schedule to keep learning on track.

Graphic Design Lesson

This next educational presentation is the perfect template to inspire design students—be it for a graphic design lesson, art education, or an art class.

Practice makes perfect and homework is a vital part of any learning process. This template also includes ready-made slides for class exercises and assignments that you can easily edit.

Telling Stories

What makes this next educational presentation great for online classes is the adaptability and the flexibility it offers. It’s a superb multi-purpose template for stories —particularly for narratives involving a storytelling element.  It has as many as 40 different slides designed with versatile flat-style illustrations that you can use and modify according to the subject at hand.

This template is created with functionality in mind. It consists of everything from charts and infographics to bullet points and columns for you to select the ones that best fit your intended narrative.

Want to get a message across to your students? Give this template a try and see for yourself just how effective it can be!

Spelling Workshop

Need an educational presentation for primary school learners? This fun spelling workshop template is surely the way to go, especially considering the importance of schools place on spelling activities.

Plus, it’s a great resource to motivate students to improve their spelling skills while at home, which increases their chances of winning the next school spelling bee!

With its vibrant and colorful slides, it provides students with an enjoyable learning experience that can even be extended to parents!

The above slide’s design even reflects that of a school schedule. This makes it easy for students to relate to as it allows them to follow their regular class schedules while at home. This is key to understanding what needs to be done and what is expected of them, not to mention it puts them in a studying mood!

Above all, it helps with staying organized. It’s estimated that up to 30 percent of class time can be lost to administrative tasks. So, being organized, albeit seemingly trivial, is extremely important to uphold a certain level of efficiency in class.

This template also includes cartoon illustrations of adorable, friendly little monsters to appeal to the young learners and keep them entertained. These are found across the template, from slides that you can fill with motivational words to exercises for practice.

Plus, its layout is so straightforward and simple that it makes the content easy to absorb. Your students will be learning without even realizing it and soon be yearning for new knowledge!

So, ready to organize your own spelling bee at home? Y-E-S!

Revolution – History Lesson

Teaching a history class online and need an educational template to turn the boring subject into a lesson that entices and thrills? This history lesson presentation will get the job done!

Its design is fittingly based on constructivism and other similar artistic movements of the 20th century. It also includes slides for assignments and exercises that are ready for you to adapt to your lesson plan.

The visual component of this presentation is also extremely prominent and distinctive, guaranteeing that your students stay focused and attentive at all times.

Need more inspiration or templates? Discover our range of free and fully customizable Google Slides and PowerPoint education presentations you can use for your online classes.

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• Teaching with Technology

Creating the Perfect PowerPoint for Online Teaching

• May 9, 2013
• Errol Craig Sull

While other forms of visual presentations have cropped up—such as Prezi and Empressr —PowerPoint remains the presentation software of choice. Yet many folks develop PowerPoint presentations without fully understanding all components of the software and/or presenter tricks that could make for much more effective PowerPoint presentations.

The suggestions that follow will help you create effective PowerPoint presentations.

Know your audience. You must be fully aware of what the audience is expecting from your PowerPoint; also, be aware of your audience’s education level—the complexity of your text and visuals must match what the audience will understand.

Create an outline to help you develop your PowerPoint presentation. The outline gives your PowerPoint the structure it requires, allows you to develop a balanced array of visuals, and gives you an initial look at the time required for students to view your PowerPoint slides. Your PowerPoint should not be so long that the audience loses interest, and if you have a set amount of time, you need be sure your PowerPoint fits within that time.

Become familiar with all features of PowerPoint. PowerPoint is a powerful presentation tool with many features that allow you to jazz up your slides, import other slides, add audio and video, change background styles and colors, etc. Spend whatever time it takes to fully familiarize yourself with all that PowerPoint offers; you’ll be able to develop a more professional and engaging PowerPoint presentation—something your audience will appreciate.

Do not become dazzled with the “whistles and bells” of PowerPoint. It is easy to be seduced by the over-the-top features of PowerPoint, such as transition and animation. Yet too much use of these will distract from the primary purpose of your PowerPoint: getting important information to your audience in an easy-to-understand manner. Certainly, some of these fun tools can help make your PowerPoint more engaging and can spotlight especially salient items in your presentation. But be careful that your PowerPoint does not turn into a Disney cartoon, resulting in a presentation that is less than effective. Overall, keep the design simple and basic.

Limit each slide to a few bulleted points. Your audience needs to quickly understand what you are presenting. Many folks load up each slide with far too much text. This defeats the purpose of a PowerPoint presentation. Keep each slide to no more than four bulleted items, with each item a maximum of one line in length. If you need to add more information, you have two options: (1) have some notes (use your outline for this) and simply add the material—by voice—when appropriate; and (2) at the bottom of each blank slide there is a section called “Speaker’s Notes”—you can add in here what you want to say to your audience beyond what they see on a slide (only you can see the Speaker’s Notes).

Use graphics to highlight your information, not overtake it. A visual on a slide won’t take the place of your text—and it shouldn’t—but it can highlight a point you are making and help to engage the audience. Have a nice balance of visuals and colors, and spend some time searching for the spot-on, already-created visual. (There are many sources: online, your own, items you’ve scanned, etc.) You also can create your own graphs and/or charts and use screenshots of items.

Your voice can truly bring a PowerPoint to life. In an online PowerPoint presentation, the audience hears more of your voice than if you were in a room with them. Thus, each clearing of your throat, sip of water, “um” and “uh,” and licking of the lips can often be heard. Speak slowly; be sure to vary your tone (no one enjoys a monotone!); stay enthusiastic and excited about the topic; and use your voice to bring audience attention to important points, closing of a subject, introduction of the next slide, etc.

Always do a slideshow run of your PowerPoint to view it as an audience member. You’ll find one of the drop-down menu items on the top tool bar of PowerPoint is called “Slideshow.” Here you have various choices that allow you to view your PowerPoint as a slideshow. Be sure to do this so you will see what your audience will see and you can quickly pick up on items that might need to be corrected, such as typos, font size, size of or lack of visuals, too much text on a slide, length of time for the PowerPoint, etc. And for each slide, make a note (e.g., #14—correct spacing; #15—OK; etc.). Once completed, make the changes and then run the slideshow again.

Check spelling, grammar, spacing, font size and style, etc. It is crucial that all components of writing be perfect. Be sure that the font size and style are easy to read. Consider line spacing and visual placement.

Always do a trial run with at least one other person. While we will see items that need to be corrected or tweaked, rarely do we see them all. Have one person or more look at it to get their input. You’ll be surprised at how many helpful suggestions you will receive about things you had not considered or just didn’t see. Your audience will benefit from this extra input.

Errol Craig Sull has been teaching online courses for 17 years and has a national reputation in the subject, and in writing about and conducting workshops on distance learning. He is currently putting the finishing touches on two online-teaching books.

Excerpted from Teaching Online With Errol: An Online Educator Must: Creating the Perfect PowerPoint! Online Classroom, 12.4 (2012): 6.

• Errol Craig Sull has been teaching online courses for more than 15 years and has a national reputation in the subject, both writing and conducting workshops on it. He is currently putting the finishing touches on his next book—How to Become the Perfect Online Instructor.

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Teaching tips

Strategies for teaching online: the ultimate guide for educators.

• The Albert Team
• Last Updated On: March 1, 2022

With COVID-19 nearly overnight transforming our traditional classrooms into virtual ones, it can seem like distance learning has appeared out of nowhere. But, the truth is, education’s shift towards distance learning had been steadily growing long before this pandemic. And it’s here to stay.

What We Review

Why Distance Learning is Here to Stay

Nothing is perfect, and distance learning isn’t a solution to all a school’s problems. However, it does meet a variety of both students’ and school districts’ needs that traditional, brick-and-mortar classrooms can’t.

Fully virtual schools have been sprouting up across states for years, and only growing in popularity. While some families have realized that full-time distance learning doesn’t suit their personal lifestyles, for others it’s essential. Competitive student-athletes with rigorous training schedules, students with mental or physical ailments, and families who just want the flexibility in their day, to name a few.

Even traditional schools are utilizing fully virtual courses for their in-person populations. For example, say a district wants to offer a film studies course to their students but doesn’t have the funding or the student numbers to justify a full-time film teacher in every building. This district will instead hire one teacher to virtually run the course through an online Learning Management System, like Canvas or Moodle. Students across the district can now take this virtual course at any period of the day, in their school’s computer lab.

We see districts investing in virtual tools, digital subscriptions, practice software, and broadband. Digital citizenship courses are on the rise as a key component in school curricula.

For educators new to distance learning, it can be difficult to know what online teaching techniques work best, or even where to begin. In this comprehensive post, we detail effective online teaching strategies, easy-to-use tips, and provide a number of accessible resources.

The 3 Keys to Teaching Online Classes Effectively

While everyone’s teaching style is a bit different, successful educators all follow the same best practices in online teaching. These 5 simple principles are the framework for all of the top online learning strategies.

1. Clear communication with your students’ families.

Families want to hear from you often and regularly. It can be easy for students and parents to start to feel disconnected. Reassure them your “virtual door” is always open, and share your email and phone number early and often in multiple places. Clear, respectful communication is the key to building relationships and classroom community.

2. Vary your types of lessons.

Your teaching should be a blend of both synchronous (happening in real-time) and asynchronous (unscheduled and self-paced). Synchronous teaching through phone calls, video lessons, or live chats allows students to ask questions and build relationships with you and each other. Asynchronous activities, like discussion boards or recorded lectures, allow your students to complete assignments at their own time and pace. Both styles have their benefits and are necessary in their own ways.

3. Select the right tools for your class.

Your school’s Learning Management System or LMS will most likely be the primary tool you use for your direct communication and posting assignments. Familiarize yourself with it early, and don’t hesitate to reach out to your more tech-savvy coworkers with questions. You’ll also need a separate tool like Google Voice o r Zoom or phone calls, live lessons, and video chatting. 

Beyond these basics, there are a huge variety of educational technology tools to transform your teaching and engage your students. This is the fun part! Use the tips and tricks provided later in this article for discovering, experimenting, and implementing new tools in your classroom.

Return to the Table of Contents

What are the Most Common Strategies of Distance Education?

Encouraging student engagement while ensuring they master their course content can be challenging in any setting. We provide vital online teaching ideas on how to make your lessons more interactive and foster active learning. We discuss these five most common strategies in distance education in more detail throughout this article:

1. Adapt your lessons to work online.

Revamp your in-person lessons to the online environment with engaging discussions, screen recordings, and interactive tech tools.

2. Set clear expectations with students and families.

Share your expectations and due dates early and often to prepare students and families for a successful year.

3. Build a strong online classroom community.

Classroom community is just as essential in the virtual environment and can be fostered with video chats, purposeful free time, and class message boards.

4. Connect with parents and keep them involved.

Keep parents involved consistently with frequent and engaging communications like weekly newsletters and personal phone calls throughout the school year.

5. Find and utilize the right EdTech for your needs.

Collaborate with fellow educators and identify specific needs to find and implement the best tools for your classroom.

Strategies for Teaching Online: How to Adapt Your Lesson Plans to Different Types of Learners

We know you’ve already put endless hours into your lessons plans, tweaking and perfecting them. Don’t feel like all that work has gone to waste! There are a bunch of different online learning strategies to adapt your in-person lesson plans to fit the virtual environment. It just takes a little creativity and the right tools.

1. Add discussions to increase engagement and comprehension.

An unbeatable tool for asynchronous discussions is Flipgrid . Instead of typing, students record themselves answering your posted questions. They can view and respond to each other’s videos, as well. This is a great option for reluctant writers, a strong way to boost engagement, and promote active learning.

For written discussions, Google Classroom is a great tool. You simply post the assignment instructions, let students post their answer, and then they can read and respond to others. Check out How to Teach From Home with Google Classroom and Albert for more tips.

For synchronous discussions, chat rooms like YO Teach allow students to message back and forth in real-time. Fair warning- these chatrooms require active monitoring from the teacher side. 

2. Utilize screen recordings to pre-record yourself and your lessons.

For the Powerpoints you’ve already created, screen recording software like Loom or Screencastify allows you to record your presentation on-screen as you speak and click through your slides. It even has the option to include a little window with your face on the screen, so your students can still see you. These videos can be downloaded or shared via weblink. 

Beyond just lessons, you can also record yourself explaining assignment directions, for those students who do better when verbally told what to do.

3. Make your lessons interactive and engaging.

Nearpod is one way to make online classes more interactive. It’s a dynamic tool that allows students to follow along and participate in your lessons on their own devices. First, you import your pre-existing lessons pdfs or Powerpoints. You then can add in places for student interaction: written responses, drawings, quizzes, polls, collaborate boards, and more. You can differentiate the type and difficulty of assignments for different student needs.

Strategies for Teaching Online: How to Set Clear Expectations with Students

Strong classroom management is as essential in the online environment as it is in the traditional one. Even though you won’t be physically seeing your students every day, read on for 5 effective online teaching strategies to hold them accountable.

1. Post behavior expectations in every live discussion.

Make your rules/expectations crystal clear from the outset, especially in live discussions. You’ll probably find even the quieter students feel more bold typing in the chat- which is great when it’s positive conversations, but not-so-great when it gets off-topic or inappropriate. 

In your first synchronous lesson, spend time discussing with your students what you as a class want your “Online Classroom Norms” to be. Create a list of around 8-10 norms, including specific rules like “stay on topic,” “always be kind and respectful,” “raise your hand and wait to be called on before turning on your microphone.” After you create the norms, review and share the document before every live lesson.

2. Set and enforce consequences in live discussions.

The same in any classroom, it’s just as important to enforce your expectations as it is to create and share them. If a student is negatively participating, you can easily mute or remove him or her from the lesson. Then, follow up afterward with a phone call home to discuss the situation.

3. Find your positive reinforcement.

My students used to love cleaning the whiteboard, or getting small pieces of candy. But online, these rewards don’t translate. However, it’s still just as important to reward students to reinforce their positive behavior. Some ideas include:

• Public shoutouts : Recognize star students in your emails to the class, during synchronous lessons, or post them on a public board. A board like padlet can even let students post shoutouts recognizing each other.
• Private shoutouts : Send students and their families individual messages when they’ve done a great job.
• Student choice : Allowing students to make even seemingly small choices can be motivating. Let a student choose which song to play before the lesson starts or choose a fun image for your virtual Zoom background.

4. Set clear due dates.

Many students struggle with time management. Without a rigid school day schedule, it’s easy for students to lose track of time and fall behind on their work. Set due dates for everything, and send frequent reminders. By the way, check out our free teaching strategy discovery tool .

Where possible, chunk large assignments into smaller ones to help students keep on pace. For example, if assigning an essay, set a due date for the outline, the rough draft, and the final essay. This helps force the “wait til the last minute” folks to move forward at a steady pace.

5. Use acknowledgement forms.

In this online environment, you’ll find yourself inevitably wondering, “Does anyone even read my emails?” To guarantee your students read and understand any especially important communications, add a link to a quick Google Form where a student and/or parent will type their name to acknowledge they read and understood it.

Strategies for Teaching Online: How to Build Rapport and Community with Students

Without the natural opportunities to make connections in a traditional classroom, it’s important to create these spaces in the online setting. We share easy best practices in online teaching to build your classroom community:

1. Use interactive Flipgrid discussions.

With Flipgrid, you and your students can respond to topics you’ve posted with a selfie video. Students can view everyone’s responses and then post a video reply. Though these aren’t synchronous discussions, seeing and hearing you and their classmates helps to form a community bond.

2. Incorporate purposeful free time .

Allowing 10 minutes before a live lesson for students to enter early to chat with you and each other, is a great way to foster important, informal connections. If possible, host a half hour recess once a week, where students can log into a live meeting room just to hang out. If conversation lags or needs direction, you can facilitate topics with fun icebreakers and “would you rather” questions.

3. Have a regular show and tell .

The virtual classroom makes show and tell easier than ever! You set the topic (their pet, their favorite outfit, something from a fun vacation), and students can turn on their video cameras and microphones to share in a lesson. Alternatively, you can include your show and tell in the bottom of a weekly email update. Students can share videos or just pictures and a caption- whatever works best for you!

4. Utilize a class message board .

Padlet is a great tool for creating a collaborative class message board. Students can wish each other happy birthdays, share exciting events in their lives, or post shoutouts and encouragements to each other. You can adjust Padlet’s settings so that all messages have to be approved by you before posting.

5. Remember the value of a personal phone call.

Just reaching out and speaking with your student one-on-one builds an essential bond. It can be overwhelming if you have a large class, so set a goal to speak with a certain number of students each week to ensure you’re reaching everyone. If you don’t have a work phone, create a free Google Voice account so families don’t have access to your personal number.

Strategies for Teaching Online: How to Connect with Parents

We know that parent involvement strongly impacts student performance in school. Research shows the importance of teachers and parents developing relationships based on trust, respect, and solid communication. 

In the online environment, parent involvement looks very different. As the person physically with the student, parents are now responsible for making sure their child is staying on-task and logging into the computer each day to complete assignments. It can take some parents a while to adjust to their new role. As the teachers, we must find ways to connect and support our parents, provide online learning strategies for students, and keep them involved throughout the school year.

1. Send frequent reminders with Remind 101 .

This is a great two-way communication tool, that allows you to send both mass and personalized text messages. Parents who aren’t fans of checking their email or logging into their LMS account every day benefit from receiving timely reminders like these directly to their phones:

• Class events, times, and locations
• Due dates for upcoming assignments or test days
• Links to resources, videos, and articles

2. Share out weekly newsletters.

Newsletter emails help keep families informed and involved with the happenings in your class and the school. We recommend including pictures and highlighting student achievements to keep parents engaged all school year.   Lucidpress offers a number of different, free templates to choose from.

3. Be clear and consistent with your expectations.

Parents want to know what they can do to support their child’s learning, but don’t always know where to start. Having clear conversations about your goals and expectations for the school year helps. In the transition to online learning, we can discuss parent expectations like:

• Checking their child’s due dates and what they’ve submitted each day
• Checking the posted grades for each class
• Reading and responding to teacher emails and calls
• Reaching out with any questions or challenges

Strategies for Teaching Online: How to Find the Right EdTech Tools and Curricula Supports

With so many different tools out there, it can be overwhelming to find the one that’s best for you and your students. Our distance learning hub is a great place to start. You can also use these simple strategies to make your selection process easy and effective. 

1. Utilize these 100+ Distance Learning Tools .

We provide a comprehensive guide of 100+ distance learning tools and strategies for effective student engagement. If you’re unsure where to begin, or just want to explore new technology, start with this list. It’s organized by both instructional need and content area.

2. Collaborate with colleagues.

Even though you’re not seeing your coworkers in the hallway every day, they’re still one of the most valuable resources you can find. It can be easy to feel isolated working home alone, but remember to reach out and ask what your fellow teachers are doing in their virtual classrooms. They’re all researching and testing out new strategies and tools just like you are, and sharing your mutual findings benefits everyone.

3. Supplement your Curricula Needs.

When you need to supplement your curriculum with ready-made online activities, Albert has engaging, standards-aligned resources across grade levels and subjects. While many resources are free, educators are encouraged to try Albert for free . Tips for teaching English online using Albert include varying our leveled readings in STEM and across topics to generate interest among different students.

4. EdTech Digital Promise Framework .

This process helps educational leaders select and run successful educational technology pilots in their schools. The steps include how to identify a need, discover and select a product, train staff, and much more.

5. Always do a test run before using a new tool in class.

After you’ve selected the new tool to try, create a mock class to assign work to. Log in and test out your activity as a student, so you can truly see if this will work for your class. Also, you’ll be able to help troubleshoot common problems that you might not have noticed from just your teacher log-in.

Common Mistakes Teachers Make When First Teaching Online

There’s a few common mistakes even the best veteran teachers make when first switching to the online environment. Keep in mind these strategies for teaching online when you get started:

1. Not setting boundaries with students and parents.

Working from home, it can be tough to disconnect from your work. It’s even tougher when you have students and families reaching out to you at all hours of the evening. It can be tempting to answer the phone or send a quick reply, but resist. 

Share the hours you’re available with your families, and stick to them. Mimic your normal school day, like 7:30am to 3:30pm Monday to Friday. It’s important you give yourself the time to disconnect, and anything your student needs can wait until the next morning. Teacher burnout is real.

2. Not testing new tools a few times before rolling them out to your students.

We all know- technology is great… when it works. Inevitably, something won’t always go as planned. But, that’s okay! Just like in the traditional classroom, teachers adapt and move on if something goes wrong. It can be intimidating to try out a new tool for the first time, so we suggest setting up a mock class and using some willing colleagues or family members as your guinea pigs before rolling it out with students.

3. Rolling out too much too soon.

Be wary of assigning complex tasks and assignments without training your students on how to use the technology first. Families and students will be capable of handling this complexity at some point, if you build them up to it. You don’t want your student spending more time trying to decipher the instructions than learning the actual content.

When assigning a learning task using a new tech tool, consider that it may take your families an extra 30min to one hour to get the hang of using it. Provide clear instructions with common troubleshooting tips. Better yet, assign a “mock assignment” of something simple, before actually assigning a lesson. For example, if it’s a discussion board, have students’ first posts be about their family pet or what they did for fun that weekend.

Wrapping Things Up: Things to Remember When Teaching Online

We’ve covered a lot of online teaching ideas and strategies. To wrap things up, here are 3 key takeaways to carry into your virtual classroom:

1. Stay communicative :

Share your expectations for behavior early and often. Keep lines of communication open, using different tools like emails, Remind 101, phone calls, and class message boards. Weekly newsletters are a great way to build community with families.

2. Continuously adapt your classroom :

Use the lessons you’ve already created, and adapt them to the online environment with different ed tech tools. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel- take advantage of the great resources already out there. Albert has a huge library of standards aligned lessons and activities for all ages and subjects.

3. Keep activities interesting with students :

Use a variety of asynchronous and synchronous activities to keep your students engaged, and meet different learner needs. Build in purposeful community-building activities like Show and Tell and time for free chat to foster strong student relationships.

We hope you found this Ultimate Guide for Educators helpful. Remember, one of the strong resources educators have is each other! What are you doing in your online classroom? Share your favorite tips for teaching and online learning strategies for students in the comments below.

If you enjoyed this post, you may also like our post on 75 educational teacher websites , our viral post on distance learning tools here or our free 150+ teaching strategies discovery tool .

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Today we have prepared for you 25 free education PowerPoint templates for your online lessons, lectures, thesis, and educational purposes. Some of them are suitable for multiple purposes, others are specifically designed for more niche topics, so we made sure there is something for everyone.

As usual, some of the websites that offer these free resources may require free registration. All templates are editable and compatible with PowerPoint and Google Slides .

1. Free Online Lessons PowerPoint Presentation Template

Here we have 20 free online education slides  by GraphicMama. With online lessons and homeschool presentations in mind, the educational slides have 2 color schemes. In addition, they feature multipurpose slides, infographics, quotes, practice, and others.

2. Free Meet Our Professors PowerPoint Template

What better way for teachers to break the ice at the beginning of a new class than by introducing themselves? This free template with a dark background and colorful shapes is ideal for the purpose. It has 34 different slides , is 100% editable, and includes 500 additional icons for further customizing your presentation.

3. Free Writing History Thesis PowerPoint Template

You might need to write a history thesis or prepare a history lesson for your classes. This template with 29 free editable slides has a beige background, doodle illustrations, and a suitable design.

4. Free Generation of ’27 Literature PPT Template

Generation ’27 is the name of a group of avant-garde poets and artists. They began to publish their works in the 1920s. 25 different slides for explaining Spanish literature to your student.

5. Free Kids Alphabet Blocks PowerPoint Template

With a fun LEGO-inspired design and vivid colors, the template is ideal for teaching lessons to younger students. It includes 48 editable slides and it’s available for free for schools and companies.

6. Free Steam Education PowerPoint Template

The design for this template is entirely based on the concept of steam education. It contains 48 free slides easy to modify.

7. Free Global Education Solution Template

A free global education solution presentation template with a suitable design of bulbs, earth, and cities. It contains 48 editable slides .

8. Free Dandelion Thesis PowerPoint Template

This free template was designed for students who need to defend their thesis before getting their PhD. It’s a good addition to the speech and features 24 editable slides to accompany your presentation.

9. Free Black Death Epidemic Thesis PowerPoint Template

A little bit niche, this design is dedicated to the 14th century Black Death and it’s ideal for the topic if you’re working on a thesis about the historical event. It has 23 free editable slides .

10. Free Lecture On Music PowerPoint Template

On a more positive note, the next free template has a design all about music. You can use it to prepare a lecture on music history, instruments, and everything about music in general.

11. Reading is Magical – Free PowerPoint Template

Kids discover the magic of reading. This free presentation design is ideal for teaching the younger audiences the importance of literature and make them fall in love with reading. It features 25 editable slides .

12. Free History of Architecture PowerPoint Template

Another niche topic for presentation. This free education template is designed to convey a historical feeling for every historical architecture lesson. It has 25 slides , easy to modify.

13. Free Geography PowerPoint Template

This free vintage geography PowerPoint template with old map background has 25 different slides and aims to assist presentations on every geography, history, travel, or politics lesson.

14. Free E-Learning PowerPoint Template

More for e-learning and online lessons. Here we have a free PowerPoint template that describes training with control over mobile. It features 48 slides , easy to customize and adapt to your presentation.

15. Chalk Free Education PowerPoint Template

A free educational template with a child reading a book and lovely chalk illustrations. This is a design that can express education through reading. 48 slides , ideal for literature lessons and presentations.

16. Free ABC Alphabet Blocks PPT Template

Here’s a free multipurpose PowerPoint design with alphabet blocks. Suitable for all kinds of educational presentations, the free template has 48 customizable slides with a color theme and 135 icons.

17. Free Science Education Center PowerPoint Template

It’s always a good day for science! This free presentation theme is based on a learning center structure. The background is blue, and it is conspicuous for the textures in the corners. It has 23 editable slides .

18. Free Handa Notebook Thesis Presentation

A free multipurpose thesis presentation design with a lovely notebook style. It has 34 slides with all you need to present your data and make it stand out, despite the casual design.

19. Free Building Siblings Relationships Educational Template

This free template has the topic of building siblings relationships in mind. It’s perfect for audiences from kindergarten, pre-school and elementary school.

20. Free Green Grass Open Book PowerPoint Template

A free Multipurpose template that suits lessons and presentations related to ecology, nature, agriculture, and environment. It has 48 editable slides and a color theme.

Presentation Design Tip:

The shorter you keep the text, the better. In fact, some specialists suggest that you shouldn’t use more than 5-6 words per slide . And sometimes, a single word combined with a powerful visual is enough to nail the attention of the students sitting in front of you and make them listen to what you have to say.

21. Free Online Library PowerPoint Template

The library concept gives the opportunity to fit any topic and adapt to any lesson. With 48 free editable slides , this template will suit school classes, business and commercial purposes.

22. Free Graduation PowerPoint Template

If you’re in need to prepare your students for graduation and educate them on the career paths that await after, this free template with 48 slides and infographics will suit the purpose.

23. Free Alphabet Blocks PowerPoint Presentation

A free educational presentation design of books being stacked up with alphabet block to top it off. It also consists of a light blue and orange color scheme. It includes 33 fully-editable slides and high-quality vector graphics.

24. Free Back to School PowerPoint Template

A classic even old-fashioned on purpose design that instantly grabs the attention. It has 36 free slides and infographics for educational purposes.

25. Free Desk Presentation Template

And last, we have this free hand-drawn template with a beautiful color scheme with 23 slides and a pinch of creativity that will suit multiple presentations.

And these were today’s 25 free educational templates for PowerPoint and Google Slides. Based on multipurpose or niche topics, the collection has something for everybody, so grab your favorites and create your awesome presentations.

In the meantime, if you’re in search of more resources for online classes, we have also prepared 60 colorful slides for that.

Final Words

We hope you enjoyed the hand-picked educational templates and found something that will adapt to your project perfectly.

While on the topic, why not check these other helpful online education-related articles.

• Top 25 Teaching Blogs To Help Your Educational Process
• How to Use Technology in Education: Save Time and Better Engagement
• How to use Zoom for Education [+ Useful Tips and Ideas]

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Essential Remote Teaching Tools for Conducting Effective Online Lessons

Updated on: 19 October 2022

The sudden transition to remote teaching has left many teachers, as well as students, faced with various challenges, from not having access to the internet to finding the proper tools to overcome the boundaries of online teaching. 

We have compiled a list of tools that you can use to enhance your experience with teaching online, or remote teaching as popularly referred to these days. You can go through the list and select the ideal online teaching tools for your remote teaching goals.

Remote Teaching Tools 

Familiarizing yourself with how the tool or platform that you use works, is as important as selecting the correct tool. 

Explore each tool and learn ways to maximize its utility to create a better teaching experience.  Your students will depend on you to instruct them on how to use the platform themselves.  

There’s a range of remote teaching software available out there, and from them, we have chosen the best ones and categorized them based on their primary purpose.

Online Communication Tools

Effective communication is the key to successful teaching and learning, whether in a physical classroom or a virtual classroom. However, maintaining online communication with not one, but over twenty students is undoubtedly challenging.

Communication platforms help overcome it; they enable communication with larger groups, with video conferencing, instant messaging, audio calls , virtual rooms, and more, with any device and from anywhere. 

Some of the tools in demand are,

• Zoom  
• Google Meet   

For a better teaching experience with these tools,  

• Create an agenda or a plan for each online class and share it prior to the lesson  
• Clearly explain the online etiquette students should follow during the class and what is expected of them prior to or at the beginning of the lesson 
• Have all microphones, except for the person who is speaking, muted. This helps cancel out the distracting noises and retain the focus of the students. Anyone who needs to speak can make a gesture to catch the attention of the speaker without interrupting them.
• When delivering a presentation or sharing an image, document or file, give some time for students to take down notes, to view or go through them.

Online Whiteboards 

Online whiteboards or digital whiteboards help emulate the classroom whiteboard/ blackboard experience with the students. Most of these tools offer an infinite canvas with shape libraries for creating different types of diagrams , charts, graphs, and other visualization purposes (i.e. creating posters, graphic organizers, etc.).  

Creately is widely used by educators for a variety of purposes: 

• As an online whiteboard where teachers and students can collaborate on the same canvas as they visualize ideas, concepts, etc. Moreover, students and teachers can connect via in-app video conferencing and track changes each other makes with real-time mouse tracking and change previews. 
• Create a variety of diagrams and visuals (i.e. dichotomous key diagrams, graphic organizers , lesson plans , etc.) needed for presentations, lessons, assignments, etc.  
• To share documents with students and colleagues for their output and feedback (with in-line comments) 

Work Planning Tools

Maintaining a work schedule is even more important when you are working from home; especially during stressful times, a solid routine can help maximize the use of your time. You can use time management and scheduling apps like Google Calendar and Calendly to streamline: 

• Creating schedules to use in  your online classes or for personal use  
• Creating schedules of online classes and keep everyone notified of dates and times.  
• Scheduling appointments with parents and students; avoid double-booking a slot 
• Inviting parents, students or colleagues for online events (i.e. webinars) 
• Creating lesson plans and sharing them with students, administrators, and colleagues. 

Learn how to create a lesson plan using Google Calendar here .

Social Media Channels

Social media channels provide a great platform for teachers, students and parents to stay connected. 

Channels like Facebook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, etc. allow the creation of exclusive communities or groups teachers can leverage on to  

• Communicate and maintain presence after online class hours  
• Share and store important information, presentations, and resources related to lessons 
• Conduct Q&A sessions 
• Encourage students to maintain communication among themselves and engage with each other while studying or doing homework  
• Conduct live events such as webinars (with Facebook or Instagram Live)

Document Management Tools 

From test papers to lesson plans, there’s an array of documents teachers have to maintain regularly. A central location to store, organize, and manage all these documents is essential to properly keep track of them, especially when you are teaching remotely.  

Tools such as GSuite , MS office , OneDrive , Dropbox , and Evernote simplify the process of maintaining the documents you own. 

• Store all documents, files, etc. in the cloud which allows you and your students to access them with any device from anywhere 
• Neatly organize documents in relevant folders and subfolders making it easy to retrieve them 
• Quickly share files and documents with anyone with a single link or as a file. You can also adjust permission settings, changing them to Edit, View, and Suggesting mode on GSuite apps.
• Collaborate with students on editing and reviewing documents, add comments and suggestions and track changes with version history

Online Video Tools

YouTube and Loom are great online video tools for creating and sharing videos with your students. You can use these tools in a number of ways; 

• Record your online classes or lectures and share them with students 
• Students can re-watch the videos if they were absent or during exam revisions. You can also have the video recorded prior to the lesson and have it shared with the students when you are on leave  
• If you are teaching the same lesson to different classes, you can make use of a pre-recorded lesson to avoid repetitive teaching 
• Encourage students to learn independently with pre-recorded video lessons. The chance of students learning a concept better is higher when they understand it on their own 
• Share links to existing video resources online

Online Quiz Makers

Whether you are teaching online or in a physical classroom, quizzes are a great way to check a student’s performance.  Online quiz makers make it easy to, 

•  Create, format, and share assessments online
•  Create answer sheets which allows you to easily track and score answers of each student 

There is a plethora of online quiz makers that are both free and paid, starting from Google Forms .

Find more useful online quiz makers here .

Online Homework Platforms 

One thing that is most challenging when teaching from home is keeping track of students’ homework. 

Homework can come in different forms; essays, speeches, tests, etc.  You can use a combination of the platforms above to get students to submit their homework. 

• Google Docs – for essays and other written assignments 
• Zoom, Skype, and other video conferencing apps – for verbal assignments 
• Loom, YouTube, Prezi , Google Slides – for videos and presentations 
• Google Classroom – Distribute assignments, grade and send feedback

Did We Miss Any of Your Favorite Online Teaching Tools? 

Most of the online teaching tools listed above are free or you can try for free and see how it works for you. Invite a colleague to explore the tools and select the ones that best suit your teaching objectives. 

What other remote teaching tools do you recommend? Let us know in the comments below. 

This post is the second in our article series on remote teaching. More resources you would find useful include,

7 Effective Remote Teaching Best Practices

The Ultimate List of Visual Teaching Strategies

The Ultimate List of Graphic Organizers for Teachers and Students

The Ultimate List of Visual Creative Thinking Techniques

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Well, these are all great! But for educators who don’t want to share their videos with the whole world; can use Google Classroom. Just add the material video in there. It will show up as a video with layouts like youtube, all the same except for the fact that only the ones in the class group will see. It is a good platform for assignments and easy to use effectively with google docs, google drive and google meet. The only con for me as a student is we can only add 20 photos to it. And these days actually we students teach the programs to teachers. 😉 Have a good school day!

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The World of Teaching

Free Teacher resources including over 1000 Powerpoint presentations

Free Powerpoint presentations for teachers

As a teacher, PowerPoint can be a valuable tool for creating engaging presentations that help students understand complex information. To use PowerPoint effectively, here are some tips:

1. Before creating your presentation, plan out the key points you want to cover and organize your content in a logical manner. Define your learning objectives and consider your students’ needs and backgrounds.

2.Keep your slides simple and avoid excess text. Use bullet points or key phrases instead of lengthy sentences. Remember, your slides should support your teaching and not replace your verbal explanations.

3.Incorporate relevant visuals such as images, charts, graphs, and diagrams to enhance understanding and engagement. Visuals can help illustrate complex concepts, make information more memorable, and cater to different learning styles.

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Maintain consistency: Use a consistent design throughout your presentation. Choose a clean and professional template and stick to a limited color palette and font selection. Consistency creates a cohesive visual experience for your students.

Use animations and transitions sparingly: While animations and transitions can add visual interest, too many or excessive effects can be distracting. Use them judiciously to emphasize key points or to reveal information gradually.

Practice good slide structure: Divide your content into sections or topics and use clear headings. Number your slides or include a progress indicator to help students track their progress during the presentation.

Engage your audience: Incorporate interactive elements such as quizzes, polls, or discussion questions into your slides. This helps to promote active participation and ensures students remain attentive and engaged.

Provide clear navigation: Use hyperlinks or navigation buttons to enable easy movement between slides or sections. This allows you to adapt to the flow of the class, respond to questions, or revisit previous content as needed.

Incorporate multimedia: PowerPoint supports audio and video files, so consider including relevant multimedia content to enhance understanding. For example, you can embed videos, audio clips, or simulations that demonstrate concepts or provide real-life examples.

Practice and time your presentation: Rehearse your presentation beforehand to ensure a smooth flow and familiarize yourself with the content. Pay attention to your pace and timing to ensure you cover all the material within the allocated time.

Remember, PowerPoint should complement your teaching, not replace it. Use it as a tool to enhance your lessons and engage your students effectively.

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The 59 Best Free Teaching Tools To Boost Classroom Learning in 2024

Table of Contents

iSpring Free is one of our favorite online teaching tools. It is a lightweight eLearning authoring software for teachers that allows you to turn a boring PowerPoint presentation into a mobile-compatible online course with quizzes. The main advantage of this interactive learning tool is its simplicity. Its intuitive interface enables any novice course developer to create an unlimited number of courses quickly and easily.

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Kahoot is a game-based learning platform that is great for creating content such as fun activities and learning games for students. You can make quizzes on any topic and in any language, and customize those quizzes with videos, diagrams, and images. Students participate in “kahoots” (games) by logging the game codes on their device or application.

3. Edpuzzle

With Edpuzzle , you can create interactive lessons with embedded audionotes, assessments, and quizzes. Its analytics tool enables you to track how students are watching your videos and if they understand the content, great for an online class.

4. Starfall

Starfall is an online service that was initially designed to teach kids to read. Its phonics-based learning model supports online games and print series, which can be downloaded for use at home and in the classroom for little students. Now, it also features animated songs, movies, and mathematics activities for Pre-K, Kindergarten, and Grades 1 to 3.

5. CommonLit

CommonLit is a database of literary educational materials that you can access to develop lessons or just find ideas. You can choose a lesson from the digital library, share it with your students, assign them text-based questions, and analyze their performance.

Quill is a platform that has a set of creative tools for teaching writing, vocabulary, and grammar and includes over 400 exercises. These classroom activities help by inviting students to learn by reconstructing sentences, proofreading passages, creating new passages, and more.

7. Plickers

Plickers is a card activity that lets you poll your class, without the need for a student device. You just need to give students cards (“paper clickers”) and use your Android smartphone or tablet to scan them to do instant checks for understanding, exit tickets, and impromptu polls.

8. Powertalk

Powertalk is a presentation enhancement tool that automatically speaks your PowerPoint slides. When compared to other common ‘text-to-speech’ programs, Powertalk can speak text as it appears and can also speak hidden text attached to images.

9. JeopardyLabs

JeopardyLabs is an online service that enables you to build Jeopardy games for students without PowerPoint, by using a simple editor. You can also choose from ready-made games created by the platform users on such subjects as foods, cities, countries, books, and hygiene.

10. Edgames

Edgames is an edutainment tool that provides educational activities, including board games, scrambled word games, sports-based games, and cards. You can help your students learn and understand personal hygiene, nutrition, current affairs, and many other things through playing games.

Teaching Tools for Classroom Management

A teacher’s tasks include planning lessons, marking attendance, assigning homework, and grading. This is where you can benefit from classroom tools for teachers. Here you’ll find online platforms and add-ons that can help you streamline all these processes and improve communication and the learning process.

11. ClassDojo

ClassDojo is a classroom management tool that enables schools to bring parents, teachers, school administrators, and students into classroom communities so they can track and enhance classroom behavior in real-time.

12. Google Classroom

Google Classroom is a free educational software for teachers that allows them to conduct online classes, invite your students, and assign homework. You can also discuss assignments online and track student progress. Google Classroom seamlessly integrates with other Google apps such as Google Slides, Docs, Sheets, and Drive allowing you to seamlessly work on different documents.

13. Class123

Class123 is one of the online platforms for classroom management that contains a chalkboard, seating chart, timer, random name picker, and many other interactive educational tools necessary for efficient class management. You can also keep track of students’ attendance and behavior, share stories and photos on boards, and let students interact in private messages.

14. Flubaroo

Flubaroo is a Google Spreadsheets Add-on designed for you to simply create multiple-choice and fill-in assignments, grade and analyze online student performance, share scores with students, and assign stickers and badges on completed tasks.

15. Show My Homework

Show My Homework is free technology software that allows teachers to administer, and control homework much easier. A teacher can quickly assign homework and record student submissions and grades on the go with its mobile app.

Lesson Planning Tools

Planning classes is one of the core parts of a teacher’s work. And it’s not easy. However, there are some solutions and resources that can make lesson planning a bit more convenient and effective. Check out the best tools for teachers that let you organize classes for free.

16. Planboard

Planboard is one of the teaching tools for lesson planning. It is designed for creating lesson plans on iPhone, iPad, or Android, and allows teachers to add files, photos, and videos, and view them during an offline or online class. Plans can be edited, archived, and shared with colleagues.

17. PlanbookEdu

PlanbookEdu is one of the best free platforms for teaching online and planning lessons. It functions like a printed book but can be filled in with texts online. With this software, creating, sharing, and printing lesson plans become easy for teachers. The free version doesn’t let you attach images and files to your plans.

18. Evernote

Evernote wasn’t designed specifically for teachers, yet its free version is one of the best tech tools that many teachers use for learning and daily lesson planning. You can collect ideas, articles, images, to-do lists, and more in a single place and access them anytime. A teacher can also use this software for personal development and organizing their life.

19. IL Classroom

IL Classroom doesn’t let teachers create their own lesson plans, it’s a website that offers teachers a free library of interactive math and language arts classes, as well as some other educational resources, like videos and assignments for students. There is learning content for different grade levels. All lessons are Common Core aligned.

20. ReadWriteThink

ReadWriteThink also isn’t technological software but a collection of free lessons and resources developed by the International Reading Association and The National Council of Teachers of English. A great advantage of this website is that all lesson plans are engaging, research based, and align with standards. You can browse lessons by grade level (K-2, 3-5, 6-8) and by areas of literacy practice: learning through language, learning language, and learning about language.

Tests and Exams Makers

Assessing students’ knowledge in distance learning seems to be more difficult than during in-person sessions of traditional education. But with the right online tools, you’ll see that it is actually even easier and even much more engaging for students and teachers.

21. Free Quiz Maker

Free Quiz Maker is an educational tool that lets a teacher build interactive assessments and exams for students from 3 question types: multiple-choice, multiple response, and short answer questions and conveniently gather studentresponses. You can also set scoring parameters, the number of attempts allowed, and time limits. The ready-made quizzes can be uploaded to any LMS, including Moodle and Blackboard. The tool also lets you create surveys.

22. SpellQuiz

SpellQuiz is another service for distance learning that is mainly focused on helping kids and adults to understand phonics. The platform contains English spelling lessons for individuals from Grade 1 to Adult, as well as fun quizzes and word games.

23. Quizizz

Quizizz is one of the free tech tools for teachers that allows them to present quizzes on science, social sciences, computer science, technical education, and art to students as a timed test or homework with a specified deadline.

24. FreeOnlineSurveys

FreeOnlineSurveys is a teaching assessment tool for building online tests, surveys, and forms. You can create quizzes using the drag-and-drop builder and 22 question types and fields, share them with your students and staff members, and analyze student progress with its data reporting tool right from your mobile device.

Plagiarism Checkers

If you need to check your students’ essays and theses for plagiarism, you can do this online with the free resources that are listed below.

25. Check Plagiarism

Check Plagiarism is an easy-to-use plagiarism checking website utilized by teachers and students. You just need to paste text or upload text files to check them for plagiarism. With a free account, you can get detailed reports that include exact matches and sources. However, there’s a limit of 200 free plagiarism queries – if you’re going to use the tool for a long time, you might need a paid subscription.

26. Dupli Checker

Dupli Checker is one of the educational tools that let you check texts for plagiarism. Without a free account, you can check only one text a day. And if you create one, you still have a limit of 1,000 words per search. To check larger texts, a free tool isn’t enough — you’ll need a paid account. The website supports many formats, including Microsoft Word and PDF documents.

27. PapersOwl

PapersOwl is primarily a website that offers services, such as essay and thesis writing, that some students use to cheat. However, this recourse also has a free tech tool for checking texts for plagiarism that teachers can use for free. You can either paste texts in or upload files.

28. Plagiarism Detector

Plagiarism Detector is a great tool for educators who need to check texts written not only in English, but also in French, Italian, German, and other languages. A free account lets you paste texts of up to 1,000 words and there’s no need to create a free account for that.

29. QueText

QueText has one of the most intuitive and clean interfaces, which makes it much more pleasant and convenient to use when checking texts for plagiarism. The tool generates pretty insightful reports, thus making sure you know exactly what parts of texts students copied and from where. However, a free account allows only up to 2,500 words a month, so to use the tool often, you’ll need a paid plan.

Content Sources for Teachers

With the enormous amount of educational digital content on the web, teachers can make their lessons even more useful and enjoyable. However, it is crucial to find trustworthy websites that provide valuable content. Here are a few sources of digital content and remote teaching tools you might find helpful in the attempts to make students engaged.

Ted-Ed is a platform that enables you to create lessons. You can build a lesson around video content and create assignments to assess how well your student understands the material. You can also use ready-made video recordings from the specially curated “TED-Ed Originals” section that features classes made by educators around the world.

31. YouTube Teachers

YouTube Teachers is a YouTube channel that allows you to leverage educational videos to inspire and engage your students. It contains over 400 video playlists created by leading organizations and industry experts such as the Khan Academy, Ted-Ed, and PBS.

32. YouTube Edu

YouTube Edu is another educational YouTube channel that provides extensive playlists on various subjects, from physics and chemistry to filmmaking and public speaking.

33. Ted Talks

Ted Talks are videos from industry experts and innovators on science, tech, business, and education subtitled in over 100 languages. You can integrate Ted Talks into your lessons to spark creativity and innovation in the minds of your students

34. TeacherTube

TeacherTube is a free resource for teachers where they can share video lectures and other materials. You can upload your video tutorials and attach learning activities, assessments, and lesson notes to your videos. You can also browse other teachers’ content and connect with educators with similar interests.

Also read →  The Ultimate Guide to Lecture Capture: How to Get It Right

35. SchoolTube

SchoolTube is a K-12 free video hosting platform that helps you integrate video content relating to subjects or concepts into your lessons without YouTube. The Free plan provides you with unlimited video hosting, video and audio creation apps, unlimited shareable playlists, automatic closed captioning, and a video quiz app.

36. Google Books

Google Books is a service from Google Inc. that provides access to unlimited books, documents, and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text, and stored in its digital database. You can save, bookmark, or download books relating to the concepts you want to teach in class.

37. Readworks

Readworks helps students from elementary school to high school build their background knowledge and enhance their literacy skills. As a teacher, you can create reading groups based on their abilities and interests, monitor reading comprehension, and assign extra-credit tasks for students as they complete reading assignments.

38. Bibsonomy

Bibsonomy is an easy-to-use tool that helps you manage your publications and bookmarks, collaborate with your colleagues, and find new interesting teaching materials for your research. You can tag publication entries and bookmarks to facilitate information searches.

39. Project Gutenberg

Gutenberg is a digital library with over 60,000 free ebooks that you can download or read online. Here you’ll find the world’s quality literature, with a focus on older works in the public domain.

40. Gapminder

Gapminder is a fact tank of animated statistics. The tech platform provides posters, interactive presentations, graphs, and handouts on global facts that can supplement your teaching materials.

Also read  → Best Interactive Tools for Presentations

Audio-Visual Design Tools

Audio-visual content is an effective asset for achieving your teaching-learning objectives. If you want to save time creating graphics, animation, or videos, or don’t have the requisite skills to work on advanced photo and video editing platforms like CorelDRAW and Photoshop, leverage easy-to-use online teaching tools from the list. The exciting thing is you can access them all for free.

Pixlr is a free graphic design software that provides you with full control over your pictures. You can add filters, borders, and perform basic image editing by using over 3000 overlays, 5,000 decorative texts, and 7,000 icons.

42. Animoto

Animoto is a free online video editor that enables you to convert photos and videos into slideshows. You can create your own presentation or just drag and drop your pictures and video clips into a pre-built presentation template to create stunning slideshows that can be used as visual aids for virtual classroom learning.

43. Pic-Lits

Pic-Lits is an eLearning literacy website that uses writing and photography to inspire and spark creative writing ideas. You can create so-called “pic-lits” that are combinations of words placed on a photograph to render some story or the meaning of the picture and share them on your interactive whiteboard during a grammar lesson.

Gickr is one of the free online tools that lets you instantly create animated GIFs. You just need to upload your pictures or grab images from Flickr to make flashy slideshows, cartoons, or banners.

45. Smilebox

Smilebox is one of the web tools for teachers that enables them to create slideshows, collages, greetings, invitations, photo albums, and scrapbooks. For example, as a teacher, you can make newsletters for your student, parent letters, certificates, and school photo albums and share them online.

Pixton is a cartoon creation platform that can help you guide your students on creating comic strips to represent their understanding of concepts. It has numerous characters, different sets of comic strip layouts, and background options your student can use to design comics and storyboards.

47. Chartsbin

Chartsbin  is one of the online teaching tools designed for data visualization and used by teachers to introduce various topics with infographics and diagrams. You can also leverage the software to guide your students on creating infographics from the learning material they have learned to show their mastery of the subject.

48. Tableau Public

Tableau Public is a great free tool for data visualization  that enables teachers to create interactive graphs, stunning maps, and live dashboards in minutes. You can use it to manage in-class exercises and homework assignments and connect with a vibrant community of data enthusiasts.

49. Roxio Photoshow Maker

Roxio Photoshow Maker  is a free online tool that allows you to combine images, video clips, and soundtracks to create presentations (slide stories). You can make them look even more professional and engaging by adding captions, effects, and transitions.

50. Ezvid Wikimaker

Ezvid  is a free video creator powered by quality voice synthesis. It was initially designed to allow researchers and journalists to turn text into video wikis. But you can create video tutorials with images and video clips. You don’t even need to record a voiceover – when you add text, it will be automatically transformed into narration.

51. Free Cam

Free Cam provides a full set of features that allows you to create presentations and professional video lessons. You can easily record screencasts , edit recorded videos, and upload to YouTube or email them to your students.

52. MakeBeliefsComix

MakeBeliefsComix is an in-browser comic creator that provides you with multiple ways to use it in a virtual classroom environment. For example, you can have your student create comic strips to practice new vocabulary, develop conversation skills, or inspire creative writing.

53. Vocaroo

Vocaroo is a free online tool that helps teachers record, send, and download voice notes. You can use it for podcasting, broadcasting, digital storytelling, or giving feedback. Recordings are available for a few months (usually three months).

Communication and Collaboration Tools

Communication and collaboration are important aspects of both teaching and learning. We’ve compiled a list of online teaching platforms that will help you make this process even easier and more efficient. Here you’ll find teaching communities, tools for sharing educational resources and tips, video conferencing software, and apps for conducting online discussions and working on group projects that many students love.

Flip is an online collaboration platform that provides a simple, free, and accessible video discussion experience for Pre-K to PhD educators, kids, students and parents. As a teacher, you can create digital whiteboards or discussion topics and share them with your students. In response, they can record and share their videos with you and other students.

55. Teacheroo

Teacheroo is the only global social network designed specifically for teachers. You can post your resources and educational tips, comment, like, repost other teachers’ learning material, and build professional connections.

Ziplet enables you to gather feedback from your students in real-time. You can type in your questions or pick ones from a library of best practice questions. Students will receive notifications and can reply instantly.

57. Teach Learn Lead

Teach Learn Lead is a community dedicated to supporting, encouraging, and connecting new teachers as they navigate their early careers in the classrooms. It includes the global education library that is a curated epicenter of K-20 research and professional development resources.

58. Google Docs

Google Docs is a free word processor included as part of a Google Docs suite within the Google Drive service. It enables you to create and edit your own documents, check your students’ writings, and add comments to provide them with feedback.

Bloomz is an interactive app that enables a teacher or a school to share classroom updates, events, and photos with parents securely. You can send an alert notification of the next parent-teacher meeting to emails and smartphones with a single click.

1. How many types of teaching tools are there?

While there are many different teaching tools, all with their own unique advantages and applications for teachers and students, we can categorize them in order to better help teachers choose the one that’s right for their needs. We organized our list into 7 categories, which are:

• Tools for building interactive lessons
• Teaching tools for classroom management
• Lesson planning tools
• Test and exam makers
• Plagiarism checkers
• Content sources for teachers
• Communication and collaboration tools

2. Why are teaching tools needed in education?

Teaching, just like any profession or task, can benefit enormously from the use of the right set of tech tools. A teacher can share their knowledge with the students, but software can allow a teacher to create memorable experiences, dynamic lessons, engaging classroom activities, and effective assessments — all things that we know can massively benefit students’ learning potential. 

Just as in every industry, new solutions are developed to improve and, in some cases, revolutionize the way we approach tasks. There is an abundance of innovative teacher tools available nowadays, so don’t let your teaching approach become outdated, and don’t let your students miss out on the newest enhancements.

3. What is the most commonly used teaching aid?

Well, it depends. In simple terms, the answer is probably pen/pencil and paper, or perhaps the whiteboard (or blackboard). All of these are simple teacher aids that help a teacher share ideas. However, if we focus on more modern, online, or digital aids, computers come to mind. In the arena of informatics, the internet is probably the most commonly used teacher aid there is.

Another way to approach this question is to answer with visual aids in mind. Visual aids are some of the most commonly used aids for teachers wanting to engage their students, but don’t get caught up in what everyone else is using. The key to finding the right tools for your needs is exactly that — the right tools for you.

This depends on your needs and those of your students. Whether you require a video conferencing software to run your online sessions, a handy tool for planning lessons, support for finding ideas, or ways to design classroom materials, we trust that you will have found the right tool from this list.

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Helen Colman

She enjoys combining in-depth research with expert knowledge of the industry. If you have eLearning insights that you’d like to share, please get in touch .

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Online program empowers students to align passion with education

Juggling full-time work and family, online student finds success in master's program.

”Do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.” For many people, that is a challenging goal to achieve. However, thanks to the University of Tennessee, Knoxville online program, one student’s dream of aligning her passion with her educational goals has become a reality.

As someone specializing in human connections, Jecobi Swafford found choosing a degree path easy. Educational Psychology with a concentration in Adult Education was a program she knew would involve interacting with and teaching adults. It would also benefit her full-time career as a human resource professional.

“I am constantly in contact with employees at various stages of their careers and life. I had a deep desire to take my expertise and enhance the learning experience for adults in the workplace,” said Swafford.

With a full-time job and an active family, Swafford found that online learning was the perfect way to pursue her goal while allowing her to effectively balance work, family and studying. It offered her convenience, flexibility, and an opportunity to focus and develop self-discipline. The absence of a daily commute was a big plus, giving her more time to manage responsibilities, including self-care, which she believes is essential to success.

Swafford also found that being an online learner at UT didn’t mean missing the support students find in an in-person classroom. She found a welcoming, passionate community that offered assistance and encouragement while fostering teamwork and collaboration. It is an environment where students truly matter.

Today, Swafford uses her knowledge from the master’s program as a human resource professional in the solar and construction industry. Yet, her journey isn't just about work; it's about personal growth too. She emphasizes the importance of believing in oneself, hard work and dedication.

Earning a master's degree has enhanced Swafford's professional credibility and solidified her expertise in human resources. It sharpened her research, problem-solving, and writing skills, making her a more competent and confident professional.

“The master’s degree has equipped me with the tools to more clearly understand the unique and diverse perspectives of adult learners,” she said. “I want to be part of a team, ensure we meet employees where they are, and support them with the tools they need to be successful.”

For more information, visit volsonline.utk.edu .

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• Published: 09 April 2024

Voices of conference attendees : how should future hybrid conferences be designed?

• Sai Sreenidhi Ram 1 , 2 ,
• Daniel Stricker 1 ,
• Carine Pannetier 3 ,
• Nathalie Tabin 3 ,
• Richard W Costello 4 ,
• Daiana Stolz 5 , 6 ,
• Kevin W Eva 7 &
• Sören Huwendiek 1  

BMC Medical Education volume  24 , Article number:  393 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

126 Accesses

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With conference attendees having expressed preference for hybrid meeting formats (containing both in-person and virtual components), organisers are challenged to find the best combination of events for academic meetings. Better understanding what attendees prioritise in a hybrid conference should allow better planning and need fulfilment.

An online survey with closed and open-ended questions was distributed to registrants of an international virtual conference. Responses were then submitted to descriptive statistical analysis and directed content analysis.

823 surveys (Response Rate = 4.9%) were received. Of the 813 who expressed a preference, 56.9% ( N  = 463) desired hybrid conference formats in the future, 32.0% ( N  = 260) preferred in-person conferences and 11.1% ( N  = 90) preferred virtual conferences. Presuming a hybrid meeting could be adopted, 67.4% (461/684) preferred that virtual sessions take place both during the in-person conference and be spread throughout the year. To optimise in-person components of hybrid conferences, recommendations received from 503 respondents included: prioritising clinical skills sessions (26.2%, N  = 132), live international expert presentations and discussions (15.7%, N  = 79) and interaction between delegates (13.5%, N  = 68). To optimise virtual components, recommendations received from 486 respondents included: prioritising a live streaming platform with international experts’ presentations and discussions (24.3%, N  = 118), clinical case discussions (19.8%, N  = 96) and clinical update sessions (10.1%, N  = 49).

Conclusions

Attendees envision hybrid conferences in which organisers can enable the vital interaction between individuals during an in-person component (e.g., networking, viewing and improving clinical skills) while accessing virtual content at their convenience (e.g., online expert presentations with latest advancements, clinical case discussions and debates). Having accessible virtual sessions throughout the year, as well as live streaming during the in-person component of hybrid conferences, allows for opportunity to prolong learning beyond the conference days.

Peer Review reports

In-person meetings have long offered important opportunities for professional development for clinicians and academics alike by promoting research, education, and career advancement. Among other things, such events have enabled networking and the introduction of new technologies and techniques into practice [ 1 ]. Research has suggested that in-person dialogue and debate through lectures, poster sessions and roundtable discussions are keys to conference success [ 2 ]. In addition, meeting other researchers, maintaining networks [ 3 , 4 ], and discovering career opportunities [ 5 , 6 ], are all important to attendees. Further, collaborative exchange between multidisciplinary members has demonstrated positive impacts on collaborative outcomes [ 7 ]. Such activity, however, is not without cost as meetings require effort (e.g., travel to conference venues, disruption to work and personal lives, and complex logistical planning for parents or caregivers) as well as money to cover registration, airfare, mileage, accommodation, and meals [ 8 ].

Those challenges amplified in response to the pandemic, as many conferences were forced online [ 9 ], requiring organisers and delegates alike to adapt to virtual environments. Research conducted on the transition has shown that motivations for conference attendance differ between in-person and virtual conferences, demanding a re-think about delegate priorities [ 10 ]. Virtual conference experiences have generally been reported as satisfactory [ 11 ] due to their being far more accessible, inclusive, and sustainable compared to in-person formats [ 12 ]. They appear to enable new learning [ 11 ] and allow populations with fewer resources to participate, thereby supporting equity, diversity and inclusion efforts [ 12 ]. Attending from the comfort of one’s own home or office [ 6 ] fosters a comfortable environment, but creating opportunities for interacting, networking and collaborating in a virtual format is challenging as chat boxes are a pale alternative to face-to-face discussion [ 13 ]. However, overwhelming digital-meeting fatigue, impersonal interactions and challenging time zones [ 14 ] also present challenges. Furthermore, online experiences have not been able to substitute for the hands-on learning via direct interaction with senior colleagues [ 15 ]. This is particularly notable within medical skills training (e.g., surgical procedures) [ 16 ]. That said, the benefits listed along with reduction in environmental impact [ 17 ] all suggest that virtual interactions are here to stay rather than reflecting a transitory adjustment.

In compromise, as the pandemic has subsided, hybrid conferences have become more prominent [ 18 ] and pressure on organisers to maintain hybrid formats is mounting as the majority of attendees now express preference for hybrid conferences [ 19 ]. That is, it has been shown that the majority of conference delegates prefer hybrid formats [ 15 ] because such meetings combine the advantages of in-person and virtual meetings [ 20 ]. For example, in-person conferences allow better interactivity with other delegates, better networking opportunities and better concentration whereas virtual conference formats were preferred for being time saving, cheaper and safer during the pandemic while also being more globally inclusive [ 10 ]. Hence, the combination of both allows for catering to diverse attendees’ needs.

As with anything, however, there are many ways in which a seemingly straightforward idea like “hybrid conferences” can be operationalised, requiring greater clarity regarding what organisers should prioritise as they continue to seek innovative ways to strengthen learning, global accessibility, and flexibility [ 10 ]. In other words, although there is a preference for hybrid formats, it is to date unclear how to optimise hybrid conferences to meet attendees’ needs. Suggestions from recent literature include that hybrid conferences may take the form of local in-person hubs, with a small number of participants meeting in parallel with online and virtual activities that include lectures to wider audiences [ 20 ]. While social interactions are more efficient during in-person gatherings, enabling virtual interaction with a wider array of individuals is more challenging. Ideas to address this include creating opportunities for social interactions through a virtual portal in which speakers can engage in discussions with delegates [ 20 ]. How to manage such innovations in the context of large-scale conferences, however, as well as what attendees would prioritise has not yet been published.

To address this gap, we surveyed conference delegates regarding how future hybrid conferences should be designed. Our main research question was “What are conference attendees’ preferences for in-person versus virtual components of hybrid conferences?” We triangulate on this question by asking meeting attendees about their preferences both in general terms and by inquiring about what could have been improved in the context of a large-scale virtual conference. By conducting this research, we aimed to provide insights into ways to increase the overall utility of academic conferences by providing guidance regarding what should be prioritised by meeting organisers.

This study was conducted in conjunction with the second virtual European Respiratory Society (ERS) annual congress, which took place in September 2021. 16,888 international delegates registered for the meeting, which occurred face-to-face until 2019. The conference attracts individuals with an interest in respiratory medicine from a variety of disciplines and career stages, coming together to present and discuss the latest scientific and clinical advances in the field. Traditionally, the conference included expert presentations with structured sessions for knowledge, clinical skills and networking. When the COVID-19 pandemic emerged, the ERS congress moved to a virtual format for its September 2020 meeting. That virtual conference included a live online streaming platform that was structured similar to news channels (i.e., attendees could stream a variety of “programmes”) that included presentations delivered by the world’s respiratory experts to enable discussion of the latest scientific and clinical advances across the field of respiratory medicine. In addition to providing knowledge updates, clinical debates and case discussions were encouraged. In addition, attendees were given the opportunity to virtually present their own local, regional and international research with experts chairing each session.

Study design

A survey was developed and distributed that was comprised of 2 parts: (1) overall motivations regarding why participants attend conferences; and (2) preferences for conference format and optimisation. The first part is largely a replication of previous work while the second is the primary focus of this study ( see Appendix 1 ). Both sections were designed using AMEE Guide No. 87 [ 21 ] with full details on how the guidelines were followed outlined in the Appendix of Ram et al. [ 19 ].

In particular, six main steps were followed. Summarised with particular attention to their relevance for this study, they consisted of the following:

(1) Literature review and alignment with previous research: Using prior research and the study results reported by Ram et al. [ 19 ], we knew that the majority of respondents would like to see hybrid conferences in the future and we were able to make adjustments to prioritise focus on what particular components of virtual and in-person conferences would be considered optimal by attendees.

(2) Interviews to understand how others conceptualise the concept: SR had previously conducted semi-structured interviews with thirteen ERS stakeholders who had extensive conference attendance experience [ 19 ]. They were asked what they believed motivates conference attendance. A theme extracted from that work pertained to convenience, so we added questions focussed on barriers to in-person attendance.

(3) Findings synthesis and (4) Question development: Our previous success with the online survey format and inclusion of both closed questions and free text questions led us to adopt a similar structure for this work. Mandatory closed questions included aspects of virtual and in-person conferences that make them successful, delegate satisfaction with a virtual conference, and format preferences. Open free-text questions were used to gain a more descriptive account of respondents’ viewpoints regarding what should be prioritised during in-person and virtual components of hybrid conferences, improvements that could be made to virtual only conferences and barriers to in-person conference attendance. Demographic variables included age, gender, country, workplace and professional role.

(5) Expert validation: ERS educational chair members were invited to review the survey and refine any items they felt required clarification.

(6) Pilot testing: Three cognitive interviews were conducted with conference attendees from various disciplines and who were at different stages of their career. This was done to check whether all the items were understandable and to assess how long the survey would take to complete online.

Data collection

SurveyMonkey ( https://www.surveymonkey.com ) was used to obtain informed consent from participants, and to execute the study. 16,888 attendees were invited to participate, via email, after the conference. Invitations included a brief description of the study, and a link to the survey with consent form included. Two reminder emails were sent over the course of a month with an incentive to win a free registration to the ERS Congress 2022. After gaining informed consent from participants, measures were taken to ensure confidentiality and anonymity of the data and by removing any identifying information from participant responses.

Data analysis

Closed questions were summarised through descriptive statistics and open free-text questions were analysed using directed content analysis [ 22 ]. The latter involved extracting keywords from the literature review that informed stage 1 of survey development. They predominantly fell into two categories: in-person attendance challenges and virtual conference challenges. Namely, for in-person attendance challenges, cost , conference registration , travel effort , language difficulties , time commitment , and accommodation were all issues that were used to define the focus of any given comment; for virtual conference challenges, internet connection , virtual networking , and time zones were known to be key issues. These served as a starting point with additional codes being added as the analytic process continued whenever a substantive issue was raised that could not be coded using one or more of these key words. That is, any text that could not be categorised with the initial coding scheme was used to develop a new code that was then added to the code book.

Chi-squared analyses were conducted to compare the distribution of responses when participants were asked to comment on in-person versus virtual components of hybrid conferences.

823 attendees (Response Rate = 4.9%) completed the survey. 40.5% ( N  = 333) reported being male, 39.9% ( N  = 329) reported being female, 0.4% ( N  = 3) preferred not to say and 19.2% ( N  = 158) did not answer. Age was normally distributed with a peak in the 41–45-years-old range ( Appendix 2 ). The modal workplace (39.3%, N  = 261) was a university hospital ( Appendix 3 ). 75.0% ( N  = 617) had attended the previous ERS virtual congress in 2020. 27.8% ( N  = 229) of participants had never attended an ERS congress (i.e., either a past in-person congress or the virtual ERS Congress in 2020).

From a total of 665 attendees who indicated their geographic location, 56.8% were from Europe ( N  = 378), 26.3% were from Asia ( N  = 175), 6.2% were from Africa ( N  = 41), 4.5% were from South America ( N  = 30), 4.2% were from North America ( N  = 28), and 2.0% were from Oceania ( N  = 13). While no demographics are available for all of the 2021 ERS congress attendees, these proportions compare well to those of a previous conference [ 19 ].

Conference preferences

Consistent with our previous work, the majority − 56.9% (463/813) - of respondents claimed they would prefer conferences to use a hybrid format in the future. 32.0% (260/813) preferred in-person meetings and 11.1% (90/813) preferred virtual formats alone. Barriers to attendance at in-person conferences were primarily cost related (reflecting 74.0% (361/488) of the reasons given for difficulty attending in-person). 21.5% (105/488) of the barriers expressed related to travel challenges (including the time required) and a small minority mentioned other things such as difficulty getting out of clinical duties and language barriers.

Optimising in-person components of hybrid conferences

503 free-text responses were received to the question: “We are thinking of moving to Hybrid conferences (combination of virtual and in-person components) for the future. What would you like to see in the in-person component?” In descending order of prevalence, 132 (26.2%) indicated a desire for clinical skills sessions, 79 (15.7%) wanted experts’ presentations and discussions, and 68 (13.5%) mentioned opportunities for interaction between all members (e.g., attendees, speakers, patients). Full details of the direct content analysis codes and their frequencies for in-person components of hybrid conferences are included in Table  1 . 21.9% of participants (180/823) selected a preference for the in-person component to be held over Friday-Saturday-Sunday , closely followed by a preference for Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday , which was chosen by 20.1% (165/823) of participants, and Thursday-Friday-Saturday , which was chosen by 19.8% (163/823) of participants.

Optimising virtual components of hybrid conferences

When respondents were asked to reflect on their preferences for the virtual components of hybrid conferences, 67.4% (461/684) indicated desiring virtual sessions both during the in-person congress and spread throughout the year. 18.0% (123/684) preferred virtual sessions only during the in-person event and 14.6% (100/684) preferred virtual sessions throughout the year rather than during the in-person event.

486 free-text responses were received to the question: “We are thinking of moving to Hybrid conferences (combination of virtual and in-person components) for the future. What would you like to see in the virtual component?” In descending order of preference, 118 (24.3%) indicated a desire for live streaming of experts’ presentations and discussions; 96 (19.8%) wanted virtual clinical case discussions; and 49 (10.1%) mentioned knowledge update sessions. Full details of the direct content analysis codes and their frequencies for virtual components of hybrid conferences are included in Table  1 .

Chi-squared analyses conducted on codes that are applicable to both in-person and virtual conference components showed that the preference for “Clinical skills sessions” was mentioned a greater proportion of the time in the context of in-person components whereas “Clinical case discussions” and “Poster and oral presentation sessions” was mentioned a greater proportion of the time in the context of virtual components of hybrid conferences.

Means of improving a large-scale virtual conference

In addition to asking attendees for their preferences for the virtual and in-person component of hybrid conferences in general terms, we also asked attendees “What improvements would you suggest for this year’s virtual congress?” as a means of understanding how to improve virtual components of conferences. 58.6% ( N  = 482) of respondents were highly satisfied (assigned 6 or 7 on a 7-point scale) with the 2021 ERS virtual congress. The factors that drove that success were dominantly “quality of speakers and presenters” (as indicated by 67.8% ( N  = 558) of respondents), the “relevance of topics/content of sessions” (65.1%; N  = 536), and “interactivity within sessions and audience participation” (38.5%; N  = 317).

361 attendees commented on improvements they would prioritise. They primarily focussed on greater interaction between members in the virtual platform (23.3%, N  = 84), technical improvements (22.4%, N  = 81) and increased variation of topics (14.4%, N  = 52). Table  2 demonstrates direct content analysis codes and their frequencies outlining ways of improving a large-scale virtual conference.

Our respondents indicated that the majority of them would prefer future meetings to take place in a hybrid format, with virtual sessions spread throughout the year in addition to during the congress itself. In doing so, they identified aspects of conferences they would prioritise for both in-person and virtual components. For in-person components of hybrid conferences, respondents recommended prioritising increasing the number of clinical skills sessions and live plenaries of experts’ presentations (e.g., latest scientific advancements, clinical debates and case discussions and, opportunities for interaction between delegates). For virtual components of hybrid conferences, respondents similarly recommended prioritising live streaming of experts’ presentations, but they also suggested increasing the overall number of clinical case discussions and facilitating opportunities for virtual discussions with experts. Suggested improvements for a large-scale virtual conference include prioritising both interaction between participants (attendees, speakers, patients) and technical improvements. Cost remains a major barrier for in-person conference attendance in addition to the challenges associated with travel.

As organisers strive to offer conferences that enable learning, global accessibility, and flexibility, the preference of candidates to have virtual components take place during the meeting and throughout the year takes on great importance. The literature, however, suggests that segregating the community of people with interest in a subject area into those who attend traditional in-person conferences and those who attend virtual meetings should be avoided, for fear of creating subgroups rather than taking proper advantage of the full community’s inherent ability to broaden the conference’s diversity and strengthen social networks [ 23 ]. This highlights a need to focus on continuing with hybrid formats with the now improved clarity of what aspects should be included in the respective in-person and virtual components.

While cost will inevitably prevent some people from attending in-person conferences [ 24 ], delegates’ desires for hybrid meetings reinforces the inequity of holding meetings that are purely in-person; incorporation of virtual components during hybrid meetings might help to enable greater interaction between those with more and those with fewer resources.

Focussing more granularly, respondents suggested that practicing live clinical skills should be prioritised for the in-person component of hybrid conferences (26.2% compared to 4.5% for the virtual component of hybrid conferences), in addition to networking. The former could include use of bronchoscopes and practice of novel surgical incisions in a simulated setting to broaden skill development. Conferences that can provide such in-person live clinical skills sessions, with experts facilitating, appear likely to attract attendees by offering direct learning they can translate back to their local setting. Recent literature suggests that more virtual reality–based technology may be used to improve the use of hands-on workshops after virtual sessions to reinforce the concepts learned in lectures and during live operative demonstrations [ 15 ]. Whether or not that can be made as effective as learning during in-person meetings remains to be seen given that face-to-face meetings allow participants additional benefits of listening to information while observing the speaker’s body language, facial expressions, and gestures (i.e., cues that are often difficult to detect virtually, but improve the ability of people to communicate effectively [ 25 ]).

That said, our findings suggest that clinical case discussions are more valued as part of the virtual component of the hybrid conferences compared to the in-person component (19.8% compared to 4.8%), thus supporting the idea that knowledge (as opposed to skill development) should be the focus when conducting virtual sessions. Consistent with that observation is that poster and oral presentation sessions were more frequently mentioned for inclusion in the virtual component of hybrid conferences. Such may be preferred by attendees in a virtual setting because they create the opportunity to present one’s findings to support continuous professional development through improving presentation skills and acquiring mandatory CPD points. They also grant the opportunity for learning from other presentations within the designated session, perhaps from the convenience of home. It is important to keep in mind, however, that previous research has reported that it should not be assumed that conference goers are a homogenous group; rather, subgroups of attendees and their different motivations for attendance likely need taken into account [ 19 ].

With respect to the large-scale nature of the conference focused upon in this study, it is noteworthy that the results show that participants envisioned the quality of speakers/presenters and relevance of topics/content of sessions to be fundamental determinants of their satisfaction with virtual conferences. Those findings are similar to those shared by Rubinger et al. [ 6 ] in their discussion of how to maximise virtual meetings and conferences following a review of conference best practices (i.e., they drew particular attention to speaker quality). Attracting high quality speakers may be more feasible in a large-scale virtual conference because conference organisers usually require a budget to cover travel costs for those who are invited to in-person conferences; the finances freed up might be used to source the best experts within a field. To ensure they meet the needs of attendees, Rubinger et al. stress the importance of ensuring that speakers have appropriate support documents and template presentations that take into account what participants should take away from the presentations [ 6 ]. Our own prior research comparing virtual conferences with past in-person conferences [ 10 ] suggested that participants would like the opportunity for knowledge gain from conferences to extend beyond that of the conference days, effectively lengthening the meeting by providing preparatory and follow-up resources. For conference organisers, pre-reading material, take-away messages in a summary document or virtual multiple-choice questions to test knowledge before and after the conference may be beneficial for attendees by lengthening the timespan in which they engage in learning.

In any case, a dominant issue for respondents in this study was the importance of greater interaction between all members in the virtual platform and the need for technical improvements. This highlights that networking is a main priority for attendees even in virtual conferences although they would prioritise in-person networking opportunities when hybrid formats are used. When conferences must be run entirely online, virtual networking opportunities may be particularly important for younger members of the community (e.g., students who may not have access to the financial means to travel to large-scale international conferences but are able to join online).

Strengths, limitations and future research

Strengths of this study include its large-scale survey design and utilising an international and multidisciplinary population that was forced to grapple with questions of conference priorities (the focus of the research) as a result of the constantly changing circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic. Conducting this study after the second ERS virtual conference, that is, created considerable opportunity to gather experience-informed guidance for conference organisers who now need to determine how to proceed with meetings in the future. Through investigation of delegate preferences and barriers faced, we were able to identify inequities inherent in offering in-person formats alone. This information will help conference organisers increase the utility of their meetings for all attendees.

The limitations associated with our study include a low response rate (4.9%) despite the use of multiple follow-up reminders and a lottery incentive, as suggested by [ 26 ]. Concern deriving from that fact is lessened to a degree by the sample size being large and the demographics being similar to what is expected from the conference delegate population. Selection bias may still exist, however, given that, for example, respondents with greater technical prowess may have been more readily able to fill out the survey. More generally, the decision to recruit from the delegate list of a virtual meeting means that we are missing the perspectives of those who did not attend the conference because they do not value the learning/interaction that is on offer through virtual meetings. It is noteworthy, however, that only 11% of respondents expressed a preference for virtual meetings alone, suggesting that participants were not simply those who were particularly supportive of the format in which the ERS took place. Unfortunately, the conference is unable to provide demographics for the full set of delegates, making it impossible to judge the representativeness of our sample but we would note that the gender and geographic distribution are similar to that of previous years [ 19 ].

Future research should include investigation into what specific sessions attendees would like to see within in-person and virtual components of hybrid conferences (e.g., online flipped-classrooms, live simulation multi-disciplinary team sessions to tackle respiratory emergencies) as well as how structured virtual socialising is perceived by attendees and/or supervisors, experts and mentors.

Our study has given light to conference organisers regarding how future hybrid conferences might best meet the preferences and priorities of attendees. Such conferences would ideally include (a) an in-person component focussed on live clinical skills sessions and networking and (b) a virtual component with sessions, throughout the year, focussing on speakers who are experts in their field and able to deliver good online teaching and learning on a variety of topics. By targeting this balance in a hybrid conference, organisers can enable the vital interaction between individuals during the in-person component (e.g., networking, viewing and improving on clinical skills) while enabling them to access virtual content at their convenience.

Data availability

The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on request.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the participants of this study and the European Respiratory Society ( https://www.ersnet.org ) for funding this study as part of a PhD research project.

SRs PhD is sponsored by the ERS; however, it was made sure that the study was designed and supervised by SH and KE who were all not affiliated with the ERS.

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Institute for Medical Education, Department for Assessment and Evaluation, University of Bern, Mittelstrasse 43, 3012, Bern, Switzerland

Sai Sreenidhi Ram, Daniel Stricker & Sören Huwendiek

Graduate School for Health Sciences (GHS), University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

Sai Sreenidhi Ram

European Respiratory Society, Lausanne, Switzerland

Carine Pannetier & Nathalie Tabin

Department of Respiratory Medicine, Royal College of Surgeons, Dublin, Ireland

Richard W Costello

The Clinics of Respiratory Medicine and Pulmonary Cell Research, University Hospital Basel, Basel, Switzerland

Daiana Stolz

Clinic of Respiratory Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany

Centre for Health Education Scholarship, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

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Contributions

The study was part of a PhD project and hence included the PhD candidate SR, and her supervisors SH and KE. The overall research group included members of the ERS; both within the educational council, DSto and RC and employed members of the educational event organisational team, CP and NT. The collective research team including all authors contributed to the conception, study design and refinement of survey and interview guide. SR conducted all interviews with NT and CP supporting the distribution of the survey and data anonymisation. Data analysis and interpretation was conducted by SR and SH with additional interpretation support from KE. SR, SH and KE drafted the preliminary article with RC, DSto, DStr, CP and NT contributing critical revisions. All authors approved the version to be published and were in agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

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Correspondence to Sai Sreenidhi Ram .

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Competing interests.

SRs PhD is sponsored by the ERS. No other authors have no competing interests.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

The study was deemed exempt from ethical review after application to the Regional Ethics Committee of the Canton of Bern (member of the Swiss Association of Research Ethics Committees, Switzerland) BASEC-Nr: Req-2021-00833 (Acquired: 22/07/2021). To gain informed consent, all attendees of the ERS Congress 2021 were e-mailed with a brief description of the study which contained a link to the survey. It was explicitly stated that by filling in the survey, participants were providing consent for their answers to be used as part of a PhD research project. Measures were taken to ensure confidentiality and anonymity of all data by removing any identifying information from participant responses.

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Ram, S.S., Stricker, D., Pannetier, C. et al. Voices of conference attendees : how should future hybrid conferences be designed?. BMC Med Educ 24 , 393 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-024-05351-z

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Education | BVSD offers work-based internships to students

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Sam Goldstein and William Ferrie are seniors at Lafayette’s Centaurus High, but they aren’t spending their last semester at the school.

Instead, they’re taking an EMT class at Front Range Community College and interning with the Lafayette Fire Department.

And while they’ll walk with their classmates at graduation, they’ll remain Boulder Valley students for an extra year to take advantage of a free year of Front Range Community College as part of the state’s ASCENT — Accelerating Students through Concurrent Enrollment — program.

“I feel like I’m working toward something instead of just waiting to be done,” Goldstein said.

They’re among nine Boulder Valley high school students participating in an internship pilot program this semester. For the pilot, students receive high school credit by completing 100 hours for their internship, plus online classwork that includes weekly journal reflections and a final presentation.

Boulder Valley wants to engage more students in similar opportunities as part of its Grad Plus initiative , which includes providing students with work-based learning experiences that range from guest speakers to job shadows to internships.

“The key is that connection to industry and helping students answer that question of ‘why am I in school,’ ” said Jody Bennett, Boulder Valley’s work based learning coordinator.

Her work includes recruiting industry partners and making sure the internships are a positive experience for them, as well as finding ways to make the work based learning happening at individual schools more systemic and organized.

“It’s in its infancy stage now,” she said. “It will, over time, become a staple in our district. It’s really exciting. We know it’s going to be amazing.”

At the elementary level, Boulder’s Flatirons Elementary created a “Dare to Dream” week in November that went so well, the district is encouraging other elementary schools to replicate it.

The week started with an assembly, followed by daily activities that included creating “dream clouds,” taking interest inventories and hearing from community members and parents about their careers. Flatirons Principal Jessica Seevers said the goal was helping students connect their interests and talents to possible jobs.

“I’ve just seen kids light up in a different way,” she said.

Following up on the week, fifth graders took a field trip to the Boulder Technical Education Center to explore the programs based on their interest areas. The school also is hosting monthly guest speakers, including “pizza with a professional” for a talk by park rangers and “cookie and career” for a talk by an HVAC professional.

“Kids are interested and curious at this age; sometimes educational systems smother that,” Seevers said. “We are trying to get kids and staff to stay excited about teaching and learning. It has been so engaging for my community.”

At the middle schools, the district is focusing on exploring career options through activities like field trips and panels of industry experts. A new software program also will help students match their interest with school district opportunities.

“We want to have the community be a louder voice in our classrooms,” Bennett said.

For the high school internship pilot, Fairview High Grad Plus lead Vanessa Carroll is working with a student this semester who is interning at an artificial intelligence company. Last semester, she worked with a student intern working with the Sunrise Movement climate change lobbying group and a second helping promote bands.

“Before this year, we really didn’t have any way for a kid to do an internship and get academic credit for it,” she said. “We’re trying to make education really innovative.”

While students in the pilot completed coursework online on their own time, it will be a formal class next school year at Fairview that they’ll attend during the school day. The teacher can help students find internship opportunities and provide support.

“The kids will have a community where they can share their experiences with each other,” Carroll said.

Goldstein and Ferrie at Centaurus were ahead in high school credits when they were offered the internship with the Lafayette Fire Department. It’s the first high school internship offered by the department.

“When somebody suggested an internship, we were all over it,” Goldstein said.

Each works with a mentor and is assigned specific shifts. They go on calls, help out at the station and attend training sessions, including one on ice rescues at Baseline Reservoir and another on roof extractions.

“There are a lot of steps to a lot of the procedures,” Goldstein said. “It’s very cool.”

Ferrie said he was initially a little nervous about interning at a fire station, but described the mentors as “amazing” and the other firefighters as always willing to help and answer questions.

“It’s a really nice way to see the environment they live in and the schedule and the routine,” he said. “We can see it from different perspectives. There are so many different jobs in the emergency medical services field. The more experience we can get, the better.”

High school students also are participating this school year in industry-sponsored projects in computer science at Boulder, Broomfield, Fairview and Monarch high schools. And career and technical education teachers are adding work-based learning experiences after participating in a study group tasked with developing more options.

Kristie Evans, a biomedical sciences teacher at the Boulder Technical Education Center, switched this year from a research-based capstone project to a work-based learning project in her senior level Biomedical Innovations class.

Most of the 13 students were able to find a job shadow opportunity that would add up to 30 hours. The rest made a one-time visit to learn about robotic assisted surgery at Intermountain Healthcare in Lafayette, then interviewed medical professionals to complete the rest of the hours.

As the job shadows continue in future years, Evans is looking to develop more connections with industry partners to make it easier for students without their own medical field connections to find opportunities.

Students attend their job shadows once or twice a week, skipping class and completing work they miss at home. They complete weekly reports on their experiences and will give video or in-person presentations at the end of May.

“The joy and the knowledge they’re garnering is beautiful to witness,” Evans said. “It’s amazing what they’re doing.”

Biomedical Innovations student Ava Murray-Swank, a Fairview senior interested in pediatric medicine, scored an opportunity to shadow a nurse at Rose Medical Center who works in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

“It’s been amazing,” she said. “I get to do a lot of hands-on work there. It’s definitely a dream come true.”

She added that she’s “super grateful” for the opportunity to gain real experience in a potential career before college.

“The college process is so hard,” she said. “Getting to focus on the field that we love in high school is just a really great opportunity.”

Phoebe Maierhofer, a senior at Centaurus whose passion for medicine started with a middle school biology class, shadowed three orthopedic surgeons at Boulder Medical Center this semester.

“It’s crazy how much I have learned in the past month,” Maierhofer said. “Seeing what I learned in class translated into real-life cases and real-life patients has been really eye opening. It just fueled my passion for medicine and made me even more excited for my future.”

Classmate Noah Bodner, a senior at Boulder’s Fairview High, connected with an orthopedic surgeon through a family friend who works at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Sports Medicine Center. He is now planning to attend CU Boulder and major in integrative physiology on a pre-med track.

As an intern, Bodner has shadowed the surgeon and his team during surgery and at the clinic.

“I wanted to get a head start,” Bodner said. “I can get my feet wet in the field during high school, so I can experience some things to learn what I want to do and what I don’t want to do. It has been a great experience.”

He wasn’t considering surgery as a possible career before, but the internship “has definitely opened my eyes to what it could be.”

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Education | Stewart Family Foundation funds free books for Longmont children

Local News | CU Boulder to increase tuition by average of 3% this fall

Education | BVSD school board talks data to measure strategic plan success

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